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The best automotive stunts often start with a wild idea. The crew at Channel 199 recently attempted one of their biggest yet: jumping a bone-stock C8 Corvette over a 110-foot dirt gap. With Travis Pastrana masterminding the stunt and driver Jim York behind the wheel, the goal was to push a modern supercar far beyond its intended limits.
The project was full of challenges from the start. The C8 Corvette, which Pastrana acquired after winning Cleetus McFarland’s Freedom 500, had plenty of power for the jump.
Travis won the Freedom 500 and took home a brand new C8 Corvette Z06, which he announced after the race that he and his team will try to make fly.
The real difficulty was the run-up: a narrow, wooded dirt trail that offered almost no traction, making it nearly impossible to hit the ramp at a precise speed. The team spent hours doing test runs in a Can-Am side-by-side to figure out the target speed, concluding they needed to hit the jump at around 70-73 mph.
Pastrana explained the incredible risks involved with such a high-powered, low-traction attempt. If the car’s tires suddenly grabbed traction at the wrong moment, “he could go, you know, 200 feet way too far,” Pastrana warned. Conversely, if the tires spun too much, the car would never make the distance.
On the final attempt, Jim sent the Corvette down the dirt path. Data showed the car approaching the ramp at 77 mph, but it decelerated sharply to 68 mph right at the takeoff point as the car’s chassis bottomed out. The result was dramatic: the Corvette flew through the air but came up just short, smashing nose-first into the face of the landing ramp.
Thankfully, Jim was unharmed, and the Corvette proved surprisingly tough, remaining drivable despite the heavy impact. Afterward, Pastrana analyzed what went wrong. “Jim says he was wide open on the gas on the takeoff, and the car went dead, which is very possible. Maybe it was… traction control that we didn’t account for,” he theorized.
Despite the crash, Pastrana was still proud of the effort, noting, “The goal was to prove that you could fly any vehicle completely stock… I still think he proved that.”
While they didn’t stick the landing, the team still sent a stock C8 Corvette flying over 100 feet through the air. It may not have been the cleanest flight, but it was certainly a wild ride and likely still the world’s longest—and hardest—C8 Corvette jump.
